Wednesday, January 04, 2017

Trump Has No Sense of Humour?

These are the opening lines of a recent NYT piece, an interview with Senator Franken about Donald Trump.

“I don’t know what it is,” Franken continues. Of course he does, and so do I. But this is supposed, surely, to be arch and revealing. It is supposed to suggest a man without humour.

Absolutely no sense of humour.

Soon after I saw this, by chance, I saw a video of Trump laughing.

But leave that aside. Surely anyone can see that one of Trump’s winning traits is his sense of humour.

“Only Rosie O’Donnell.”

Like most good comedians, his style is deadpan.

How often have you seen Buster Keaton laugh? Jack Benny? Groucho Marx? George Burns? Walter Matthau? Bob Newhart?

For the most part, nothing kills a joke more surely than laughing as you tell it.

Franken, as a professional comedian, knows this.

He is being disingenuous. He is being a typical politician.

Are you laughing at me? What's so funny?

Could it also be the left that has no sense of humour? Fraqnken surely sees the joke, but perhaps he can reliably count on his constituency, like the New York Times, not getting it. It fits: they insist always on taking anything that Trump says strictly literally.